


A Brief Moment in a Churchyard

by Roswellian



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roswellian/pseuds/Roswellian
Summary: Of the five in attendance none was happy to see him go, but neither were any of them particularly sad. They had each come to church yard filled with the bitter feelings of those who would not wish death on any one but who still thought that, in this case, it might have been a mercy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Libis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Libis/gifts).



> This is probably not at all what you had in mind. It wasn't what I had in mind either.

When they buried Mordred it was in an ornate coffin too good for him. They buried him in a black shroud of very fine wool and they sung four hymns over him, three that were usually sung over coffins and a fourth to bind his restless soul to an easy sleep.

Of the five in attendance none was happy to see him go, but neither were any of them particularly sad. They had each come to church yard filled with the bitter feelings of those who would not wish death on any one but who still thought that, in this case, it might have been a mercy. They came filled with relief and cloaked in duty.

The Priest came because for fifteen years he had buried everyone in the city and because he would continue to do so. He said his prayers over the grave because of this duty, and started the customary hymns with his customary tone. But when he finished the last of them with a mournful note it was not the young man he was burying but instead his duty to the shadow of the boy Mordred had once been.

He came to the tiny church on St. Crispin’s day. His voice had shaken as it always had when he first arrived.

It was those first months in the castle that cold forged him into an iron sword. One might have thought that is was the fifteen years of kneeling at his mother’s feat and being continually baptized in the burning fire of her belief, or that it was living in a tower with none but his mother and the occasional visits of half-brothers who feared him. It was not.

He arrived at the Castle Camelot still burning like hot metal from his mother’s shaping. It was the reality of living in his father’s castle and being shunned by his father’s men and being poked at by his Father’s wife that served as a cold plunge pool to steal his glowing.

“Father?” he had said in his tinny voice.

“Yes,” The Priest had said with the particular uncertainty common among those who found themselves in Mordred’s presence. It was the odd combination of his royal blood, which like most things royal could be sensed through mere proximity, and his strange limping gait that not even the squire master had managed to beat out of him.

“Will you listen to my prayer, Father?” Mordred said.

And The Priest had, though Mordred did not so much as say a word aloud. Mordred knelt at his feet and The Priest had listened to his silence. He had listened to the silence until he heard in it the subtle susurrations of Mordred’s lips as they moved. The Priest could not imagine what he might be saying to god but he listened anyway.

It became their little ritual. Once a week Mordred would blow into the church like the crumpled skeleton of a fallen leaf and settle at the altar. It was not a duty of of his priesthood. It was his duty anyway.

Also in attendance were two palace servants. Morgan Tud the physician, who had sewn up cuts on Mordred and never asked where they came from, came in her infirmary whites. Lucan the Butler arrived with a pale thin face drawn against the darkness of the morning. The one or two of cooks might have come, but there was a funeral feast to prepare. It was not Mordred’s funeral feast of course. His mourners would split loaves of black rye bread in his honor.

Though few felt they knew him, and even fewer liked him, the servants of The Castle Camelot were kinder toward Mordred than any other group. He ate with them, you see. He had been knighted some few years before. His shield, the two headed bird of his not-father Lot set below the silver band of royal blood, had hung in the great hall since. He wore his father’s blood well if uneasily.

But there were times when a bastard was not wanted at The King’s Table, and to eat Mordred would have to bare the cold weight of disapproval. And there were times when a bastard would not be welcomed into the hall at all. Beyond that there were times when Mordred could not bear the thought of sitting among all those legitimate sons.

Most nights he broke bread with the cooks and maids instead. He ate the plain bread and soup of servant’s dinners, and grew lean off the leftover meat from his father’s table. That endeared him to them. He did not laugh with them as a friend might, he rarely laughed at all, but he smiled at their bawdy jokes and knew all their children’s’, husbands’, fathers’, wives’ names.

For a long time after his death there would be a place set at the servants table for him, as if he would wander in again to sit with them. It was not out of mourning, or not much out of morning, but rather just a habit that petered out rather than being broken.

Of the last two attendees, both of who were noble, one was Sir Kay. There is much to be said of Sir Kay. He was certainly cruel to Arthur when they were both boys in Sir Ector’s household, nor was he any one’s favorite knight. Those who liked knights for their skill and glory liked Lancelot, and those who choose favorites based on their words like The Sparrow Hawk’s dry wit. Kay was gruff and often casually rude.

Yet, he aspired to be better than he was and was kinder for it. More than that, he loved Mordred. Other people had loved Mordred but Kay loved Mordred in a way that had no sharp blade hidden in it, no envy, no purpose. It was a craggy, unspoken sort of love. It had no mean intent in it at all, it just was in the way that hills just were, and that made it unique for Mordred.

Mordred had been his squire, and Sir Kay Mordred’s knight master. It had all happened quite on accident. First there had been a few brief conversations on the courtyard when he had first arrived. Then there had been some two or three practice fights in which Kay had seen something in Mordred, some wild cliff that Mordred would have happily throw himself off, in fact had been on the edge of for so long that he was no longer aware of how high it was, perhaps was not even aware that it existed and would simply step off without having meant it at all. One day, Sir Kay new, he would find himself broken on the rocks at the bottom of it without knowing what moment had launched him into the fall.

After that Kay had taken to watching him and liked what he saw until one day it had occurred to him that he should take on Mordred as his squire. There was no other logical step to be taken besides that. Sir Kay was quite surprised to find he didn’t mind at all. Also to his surprise, he cried when he presented Mordred with his shield. He might have cried more if he had been allowed to present Mordred with his interlocked keys as he had wished. He cried at the graveside too, though everyone who saw would swear later that he had been stony faced and silent.

The last attendee was golden Galahad. He had shorn his dark hair short in grief for Mordred. It was assumed that it was for Arthur. Everything was for Arthur in those first long days after his fall. When the wind sang through the trees people said it was for Arthur. When it rained it was tears for his pale cold body. When the plaster dust fell from the ceiling it was the castle breaking under the strength of its grief for its lost lord.

But Galahad did not mourn for Arthur. Well, he did not mourn for him more than he mourned for any lost soul; he was a kind man and did not take any death easy. Galahad was good to to the very core of him, but he would never find it in himself to mourn for Mordred’s absent father.

He mourned for Mordred instead. He mourned for a friend few new he had. Who would guess that Mordred, who had all the qualities of a trip wire set in a dark corner, had no closer friend than Galahad, who appeared as clear as a mountain lake a noon? Who but another bastard would understand the sympathetic pain they felt or would understand what they did not talk about but none the less shared?

It is assumed that bastards are solitary creatures. They have no proper families so why should they have proper friends. No one who had seen Galahad and Mordred, one with his head in the other’s lap, spinning secrets between each other in a cloistered corner of the disused north vegetable garden would think this common wisdom true.

There were other bastards in Camelot of course. There were throngs and throngs of them come to work in the kitchens or to find some sort of life for themselves. But only Galahad and Mordred had grown up as shadows cast by their glowing sun fathers and forge bright mothers. They were the only bastards to have places set for them at the round table. They were the only bastards to have been so perfectly forged into the swords of the last generation.

When Galahad took Mordred in his arms and lay him in his coffin he buried the only peer he had ever had in the world.


End file.
